Certain eras exert an unshakable hold on the American imagination. We can’t seem to get enough of the 1920s, for instance — a fact that was surely not lost on Baz Luhrmann when he decided to film “The Great Gatsby.’’

The 1940s is another such era. In our reductionist cultural shorthand, we think of the ’40s as a more innocent time, at least on the homefront, far from the World War II battlefields where illusions were scarce.

The Lyric Stage Company’s “On the Town’’ reflects that innocence, but its mood is also shadowed by our contemporary mistrust of happy endings. Directed by Spiro Veloudos and choreographed by Ilyse Robbins, this is a production longer on wistful charm than effervescence.